Page:Boris Souvarine - The Third International.djvu/12

 Many were the Socialists who awaited from the hands of the bourgeoisie both disarmament and peace, as later, in a paroxysm of aberration, they awaited from President Wilson's influence those benefits which Socialism expects solely from the mission of the proletariat. Such a heresy proves that we must not play with reformism: Socialism must eliminate it or perish.

Inspired by this spirit which respected the form of the Marxian interpretation whilst emptying it of its revolutionary content, which extinguished the flame and only preserved the ashes, Socialists held as legitimate colonial expansion, that detestable aspect of imperialism, by affirming the need for the colonies to traverse the phase of capitalist production prior to the abolition of their subjection. The most cynical confirmation of this thesis was that of the Italian reformers who were banned from the party at the time of the expedition to Tripoli.

Finally,when faced by the prospect of a European war, the misinterpretation of the fundamental principles of the class war was disclosed, side by side with the theoretical affirmation of the responsibility of the regime, formulated as if to rid themselves of a painful task, the Second International proclaimed the necessity of "national defence" and the "defence of an invaded country."

To borrow thus the bourgeois phraseology which Socialist language would have expressed as "defence of capitalist privileges" and "sacrifice of the proletariat to the interests of the class oppressing them, to a country they did not yet own," was this not renouncing revolutionary opposition, a renunciation by which the possessing oligarchy were soon to benefit?

It is true that the International further proposed a popular agitation as a means of ending the war, and hastening the fall of capitalism. But this is precisely an absolute contradiction.

To defend the bourgeois mother-country excludes all hypothesis of revolution: events have amply proved this.

The adhesion to "national defence" subordinates all proletarian schemes to the victory of one imperialism over all other competitive imperialisms, the collaboration of classes for the benefit of a privileged class, the participation in power, the credit votes, etc., etc., all diminish the